“I hope we'll get lucky enough to grow old together.”

“To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too-that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.”

“Not everyone believed in marriage then. To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too - that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.”

“This was my one brush with love. Was it love? It felt awful enough. I spent another two years crawling around in the skin of it, smoking too much and growing too thin and having stray thoughts of jumping from my balcony like a tortured heroine in a Russian novel.”

“I get why no one bothers with the usual rules," ... "I was in the war, too, you know. Nothing looks or feels the same anymore, so what's the point?" ... "Still, I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else.”

“You make your life with someone and you love that person and you think it's enough. But it's never enough, is it?I couldn't say. I don't know anything about love anymore.”

“When I saw the rats the first time, I wanted to drop my basket where it was and run away, but we weren t rich enough for symbolic gestures. So I walked.”